How Usher and Chris Brown’s R&B Tour made history at Atlanta’s biggest venue
The R&B Tour, a massive joint outing headlined by Usher and Chris Brown, has been discussed and hoped for by the pair and their respective teams for nearly a decade.
But plans didn’t materialize until February.
“I think the timing felt right for everybody because they were both riding separate, incredible waves of success,” Usher’s manager Ron Laffitte told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution via Zoom.
For 37-year-old Brown, that success included another Grammy win, chart-topping hits and a stadium tour — his first. For 48-year-old Usher, that wave featured a Las Vegas residency that led to a Super Bowl halftime performance, his first solo album in eight years and a global arena tour.
Starting tonight, the two R&B giants will stop at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium for five shows (including concerts on Nov. 6, 8, 10 and 11) on their first joint trek — the most an artist has ever performed on a single tour at the venue. Getting here, though, required a lot of collaboration and commitment within a tight timeline.
“Everybody recognizes how significant this is for not just the Atlanta music scene, but Atlanta itself,” Laffitte said.
Laffitte has known a joint tour was possible since joining Usher’s team eight years ago. But before it could happen, Laffitte, who has also worked with Gracie Abrams, Pharrell Williams and OneRepublic, had one goal for Usher.
To remind the world that he’s one of the “great kings of popular music.”
“We had already lost Michael (Jackson) and Prince, and, to me, it was Usher who was next in line,” Laffitte added, noting his work on Usher’s Las Vegas residency, spanning 100 shows from 2021-2023.
He credited the tour’s producers, former RCA Records president Mark Pitts and Live Nation’s senior vice president of global touring Colin Lewis, with helping to “stubbornly bulldoze this idea to life” once Brown and Usher agreed at the top of the year.
That drive mainly stemmed from the superstars’ respective admiration for each other, Laffitte said. Usher and Brown have collaborated frequently over the years, most recently on the latter’s remix of the single “It Depends.”
Last fall, Usher was a special guest during an Atlanta stop of Chris Brown’s Breezy Bowl at Bobby Dodd Stadium, marking the last time they shared the stage before this year’s R&B Tour.
Still, “the pressure was and remains immense,” Laffitte said, adding that tours are typically planned 18-24 months in advance.
“It would have been so much easier to say, ‘Let’s do this in the summer of 2027, and take the time that we all need to get this thing done correctly,’ Laffitte said. ”But once the decision was made to go, there was such an incredible, positive energy and momentum around bringing this to life that nobody looked back.”
To further help with the tour, Usher, through his New Look nonprofit and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Detroit, hired student interns from Detroit and Atlanta. The interns, who were later hired to work on the tour full-time, were tasked with everything from audio production to photography.
Usher was not made available for an interview for this story. But a rep for the singer said via email that making history in his hometown feels like a proper homecoming.
“Atlanta made me, so five nights at Mercedes-Benz Stadium is me coming home to say thank you,” Usher said in a statement sent by his representative to the AJC. “Setting a record in one of the music capitals of the world hits different.”
A lucky circumstance
The R&B Tour, which opened in Denver in June, concludes in Tampa next month. The Atlanta tour canceled four concerts in other cities in October to prioritize the health and well-being of the performers and staff (the cancellation also aligned with Chris Brown’s court hearing in England, where he received a suspended eight-month prison sentence for his role in a London nightclub attack).
Atlanta was initially only slated for two shows on the R&B Tour. But three more were added shortly after the tour announcement, which the venue was luckily able to accommodate, according to Doug Roberts, senior vice president of revenue and events for AMB Sports and Entertainment (which runs Mercedes-Benz Stadium).
No other programming was scheduled for those dates, and games for Atlanta United and the Atlanta Falcons, who both play at the stadium, don’t conflict. In May, when the NFL released its schedule for this season, Roberts knew they’d have room to host the R&B Tour for multiple nights.
He said gearing up for the show warranted immense communication and planning, adding that he sent some of his team to previous shows on the tour to gauge their operational protocol.
With the Georgia-Florida rivalry game on Oct. 31 and Atlanta United’s final home game the following day, preparing the building in time for Thursday was a challenge.
Production and stage load-in for the Atlanta stops began Monday.
“You’ve got to clean the building, and you’ve got to get food deliveries, and you’ve got to have a staff that works a long day, and there’s just all the pieces that have to be really meticulously planned and organized,” Roberts said.
But he said his team is well-equipped to tackle it. They faced similar hurdles with Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour in 2025, which held the previous record at the stadium with four concerts. Multi-night residencies on tours are a recent trend in the music industry. Harry Styles, who performs in Atlanta next spring, recently capped 30 consecutive shows at Madison Square Garden. Bad Bunny performed 31 shows at one venue in his native Puerto Rico last year.
Roberts said he can see similar residencies happening at the venue, given they don’t conflict with their sports schedule.
“It’s (a trend) that we like because we’re well positioned to be a part of those routes,” Roberts said. “If you’re looking at what cities to go to that are great at big events, Atlanta is built for that.”
So far, the R&B Tour has sold over 2 million tickets grossing over $400 million. The trek was also the highest-grossing and best-selling tour of September, according to Billboard’s monthly boxscore — beating Karol G and Celine Dion. Brown and Usher are the first pair of artists to top the chart.
Sasha Rincon-Camacho, Live Nation’s vice president of global tour marketing, said those figures and the artists’ historic run in Atlanta set a precedent for the future of the R&B genre.
“It reminds folk that it has a place in the fans’ hearts,” Rincon-Camacho said. “It’s not to be ignored because it has value.”
She said the five-night mini residency also points to a “very engaged” fanbase in Atlanta, across genres. Last year, for his Breezy Bowl Tour, Chris Brown performed three Atlanta dates, the most in any single city along the tour.
“Atlanta is just a major market in general,” Rincon-Camacho said. “The infrastructure is there. The regional draw, the support to large-scale stadium productions makes it really something that’s sought after.”
Heat Check is a monthly music column where AJC culture reporter DeAsia Paige explores the temperature of Georgia’s buzzing, expansive music scene — via the people and places within it. The column includes music news, trends and any Georgia-related music that DeAsia is listening to. If you’re a Georgia artist and have music you want to be considered for this column — or if you just want to talk music — feel free to send an email to deasia.paige@ajc.com. If you’d like to receive Heat Check via email, sign up here.
IF YOU GO
The R&B Tour
7:30 p.m. Nov. 5-6, 8, 10-11. $37-400 (mainly resale tickets are available for the last four shows). Mercedes-Benz Stadium, 1 AMB Drive NW, Atlanta. 470-341-5000, mercedesbenzstadium.com.